I believe this was the first Vietnam War movie...it hits the target well, one side fighting an all out war while the other side ( America) fighting a limited war.
Chewing Gum For the Mind.
It sux. Even Burt Lancaster cant save it. Holy Cow! People! I mean, the details alone ruin it. Check out the haircuts. In 1964 they would have been white sidewalls, NOT the M.A.S.H. shaggy look. The uniforms were all new, too. And Burt is wearing the jungle boot that came along later in the war. The Deuce & 1/2's are World War II era. Plus those little advisor camps didnt have shelves full of commo gear..they might have one radio to keep in touch with the province headquarters, and damned little else that required electricity.
A Compelling Piece of the Larger Picture That Was Vietnam
I was too young to remember the Vietnam conflict firsthand so I do not have strong passions one way or the other. I do, however, hope that any portrayal of the war treat the men who fought there fairly and honorably. On this count "Go Tell the Spartans" does so. The setting of the film is in the rural outskirts of South Vietnam where a few American advisors are posted with a few ARVN regulars under their command. Their assignment is to protect a seemingly insignificant village outpost. It wouldn't seem that this would be a target of Vietcong activity but little in this war made sense conventionally. What the makers of this film are trying to convey is that this skirmish is a microcosm of the larger battle that was to come. They wait until the end of the picture to announce to powerful effect that it is 1964, the year prior to the escalation of the war. The battle of Muc Wa is a small piece of a big puzzle but it is a harbinger of the ominous things to come. Burt Lancaster is effectively worldweary as Major Barker, a man who fought honorably in two prior conflicts but has the foresight to see his current assignment as a sucker's deal. The largely unknown cast, both American and Asian, are effectively utilized here. Standouts are Craig Wasson as a soldier who idealistically volunteers for Vietnam only to have his illusions shattered and Jonathan Goldsmith as a sergeant whose been in Vietnam too long. The Vietnam conflict has produced many compelling films and "Go Tell the Spartans" can be honorably mentioned in this impressive canon of films.
Mixing action, humor, sentiment, and even a few righteous moral convictions, The Wild Geese is good, rousing fun. Released theatrically in 1978 (oddly, this 2005 DVD release is referred to as the "30th Anniversary Edition"), director Andrew V. McLaglen’s film depicts the adventures of a group of British mercenaries hired by a shady multinational corporation to free the benevolent leader of an African nation held captive by a ruthless dictator. Led by the caustic, no-nonsense Col. Allen Faulkner (Richard Burton), these soldiers of fortune are all stout fellows out to earn a big payday and restore a good man to his rightful place of power (the underlying message of universal racial brotherhood is effective, if somewhat simplistic), and they do their job swiftly and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Richard Burton - Roger Moore - Richard Harris - Hardy Krüger - Stewart Granger Director(s): Andrew V. McLaglen DVD Release Date: Released the 27 September 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This restoration of Sam Peckinpah's 1965 western Major Dundee is nothing short of magnificent, a noble attempt at restoring a famously wrecked masterpiece. When Peckinpah went over budget and over schedule during the Mexico shoot, unshot scenes were canceled and the footage rudely cut by the studio. The director disowned the results. In 2005, surviving footage was patched back in, and a new musical soundtrack commissioned to replace the score Peckinpah hated. This raises some legitimate questions about interpreting a director's intentions, and about messing with film history, but Major Dundee--The Extended Version is such a rousing, mysterious experience, one feels grateful.
Major Dundee (Charlton Heston) is a vainglorious officer busted to the decidedly inglorious job... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charlton Heston - Richard Harris Director(s): Sam Peckinpah DVD Release Date: Released the 20 September 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Cy Endfield co-wrote the epic prequel Zulu Dawn 15 years after his enormously popular Zulu. Set in 1879, this film depicts the catastrophic Battle of Isandhlwana, which remains the worst defeat of the British army by natives, with the British contingent outnumbered 16-to-1 by the Zulu tribesmen. The film's opinion of events is made immediately clear in its title sequence: ebullient African village life presided over by King Cetshwayo is contrasted with aristocratic artifice under the arrogant eye of General Lord Chelmsford (Peter O'Toole). Chelmsford is at the heart of all that goes wrong, initiating the catastrophic battle with an ultimatum made seemingly for the sake of giving his troops something to do. His detached manner leads to one mistake after another, and this is... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Douglas Hickox DVD Release Date: Released the 27 September 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Nineteen thirty-nine is often proposed as the movies' halcyon year, and three reasons why were directed by John Ford: Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln, and Drums Along the Mohawk. In that exalted company Drums... would have to be accounted "merely superb"--even if it's the best film ever made about the American Revolution and, oh, only about eighth-best picture of its year.
Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert play newlyweds in New York's Mohawk Valley at the time of the Revolutionary War. That war is more a distant rumor than a direct concern of people with cabins to raise, crops to harvest, and firstborn on the way. When it comes to their valley, in the form of hitherto-peaceable Indians whipped up by a gaunt Tory with an eyepatch (John Carradine), life changes... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Claudette Colbert - Henry Fonda - Edna May Oliver Director(s): John Ford DVD Release Date: Released the 24 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Walker (Lee Marvin) strides through Los Angeles with the steel-eyed stare of a stone-cold killer, or perhaps a ghost. Betrayed by his wife and best friend, who gun him down point-blank and leave him for dead after a successful heist, Walker blasts his way up the criminal food chain in a quest for revenge. Did he survive the shooting or return from the grave, or is it all a dying dream? The question is left in the air in John Boorman's modern film noir, a brutal revenge thriller based on Richard Stark's novel The Hunter (remade by Brian Helgeland as Payback), set in the impersonal concrete and steel canyons of Los Angeles and eerily empty cells of Alcatraz. Walker kills without remorse, guided by shadowy "informant" Keenan Wynn, whose own agenda is carefully concealed, and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Lee Marvin - Angie Dickinson Director(s): John Boorman DVD Release Date: Released the 05 July 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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